``China is a developing country with large population and adopting the Western system indiscriminately and completely in such countries will not work,'' Li, currently chairman of the National People's Congress (NPC), said.

``I believe it should be up to the people of various countries to make their own decisions about the road to development and the social system that they would like to adopt in their countries, and it should not be judged by Western standards,'' the former premier said in an interview to a German magazine Handelsbatt.

Li, currently number two in the Chinese Communist Party hierarchy, said China cannot afford to repeat the ``chaotic situation'' experienced during the decade-long Cultural Revolution (1966-1976)where thousands of political organisations grew overnight.

``The Communist Party is the leading force of China's revolution,'' the senior leader said while defending the one-party system, saying that its 1.2 billion people enjoyed ``extensive amount of democracy'' under the present system.

``In China, economic development has to be continued on political stability and on the correct handling of the relationship between reforms, development and stability,'' Li said.

Referring to the crackdown by the Chinese army on pro-democracy activists on June 4, 1989, Li, who was prime minister then, justified the action and ruled out any re-evaluation of the issue.

He said the party was unanimous on the decision of the crackdown, adding, ``This was the consensus of the party central committee with Comrade Jiang Zemin (Chinese president and party general secretary) at the core.'' Li also said Mao Zedong had committed ``serious mistakes'' during his Cultural Revolution.

However, considering Mao's life as a whole,his contributions to China's revolution far exceeded his errors, he added. He brushed off criticism that modern China has deviated from Mao's thoughts and principles by pursuing capitalism.

``His (Mao's) thought is a valuable ideological asset of the Communist Party of China and the country is still guided by it,'' Li asserted.